Hope as Social Practice

Abstract

Within much of classical Jewish and Christian discourses, hope is often articulated as a belief in super-ordinary interventions into the present order (i.e., supersessionist logic seen within much of Jewish and Christian religious thought). I argued in chapter 1 that Benjamin and Zizek (to some extent) tend to employ apocalyptic language in order to envision social transformation. They use supersessionist logic. I do not want to interpret hope through employing supersessionist logic, as it may not enable one to theorize the conditions under which hope is possible within the worlds we already inhabit. For certain, supersessionist logic such as apocalyptic language can be defiant and subversive to hegemonic structures. However, such logic does not attend to the complex, social practices that shape and inform what is possible in our neoliberal moment.